First Look At Daniel Day-Lewis As Lincoln...Sort Of

There's a very good reason why Daniel Day Lewis has been in only 10 movies since 1989 and has four Oscar nominations: he's extremely picky about his roles and when he decides to do a movie, he dives in head first. One of the most committed method actors working in the industry today, he has been known to stay in character for months to insure that his performance is 100% pure. This approach has not changed for the production of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, in which the Academy Award winner plays the titular president. Now one of the first images of Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln has arrived online, and while he's not actually in costume, he still looks amazing.

Check out the image below, courtesy of Twitter user @UVAMichael, and click on the image to see it full size.

[IMAGE REMOVED BY COPYRIGHT HOLDER]

Holy. Shit. This is just an actor sitting in a restaurant enjoying a nice meal, not a picture of him on set, yet the likeness is uncanny. It may just be a case of me being fooled by that awesome goatee, but this is just plain impressive.

Based partially on the Doris Kearns Goodwin book Team of Rivals, Daniel Day-Lewis may have the title role, but the Spielberg film has one of the best casts in recent memory, with Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Hal Holbrook, James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, Bruce McGill, David Strathairn, Joseph Cross, Walton Goggins, Lee Pace, David Costabile, Jackie Earle Haley, David Oyelowo, and Jared Harris also playing roles. The script was written by Tony Kshner, John Logan and Paul Webb and the film is looking to be released sometime in December 2012.